Last week, Sony
released its 2.40 firmware update for the Playstation 3 to much fanfare
from owners. The 2.40 firmware brought a few new features to the table
including Trophies and in-game XMB access.

Thing quickly turned sour, however, when a number of people
reported random problems with the 2.40 update -- some unlucky people even had
their consoles bricked by the update. As the complaints rolled in, Sony sprung
into action and took down the update.

"In order to further assess the issue, we have
temporarily taken the firmware offline for further testing," said a Sony
representative last week about the 2.40 update. "We are working diligently
to isolate the problem for those few consumers and to identify a solution
before we put the firmware back up."

"As many of you know, we released PS3 firmware update
v2.40 last week, but had to take it offline temporarily because, for a limited
number of users, the XMB wouldn’t display after the update was installed,"
said Eric Lempel, Sony's PlayStation Network Operations Director. "We’ve
been able to fix the problem, and I’m happy to report that firmware update
v2.41 will be released shortly. We want to extend our apologies to the
PlayStation community for any inconvenience."

It appears that the 2.41 update offers no new features over
2.40 -- it simply addresses the problems that that many users experience last
week. However, Lempel made no mention about what's in store for PlayStation 3
owners who had their system bricked by the 2.40 update.

"The Space Elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing" -- Sir Arthur C. Clarke